Wednesday, 13 March 2013

My Kids' Verdict on Homesteady Ketchup

Ketchup. Nine times out of ten, you'll find it on our dining table, in pride of place between our Imperial War Museum place-mats and mismatched crockery. Because I am miserly, I buy the cheapest one I can find at Asda. It compares favourably to Heinz and is popular with the children, but there's a whole lot of sugar in that 23p bottle.

To make your own tomato ketchup (or "red paint" as my nan used to call it), you will need about an hour and the following ingredients:

 2 tbsp olive oil 4 small onions, chopped 2 garlic cloves, peeled 2 x 400g can tomatoes (I bought the posh Italian ones as they were on special offer). As you can see, I have had to label these - and the tomato puree - with PLEASE DO NOT USE stickers or they would have been sacrificed by the King before now. 170g tomato puree 2 tbsp sugar 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar 1 teaspoon sea salt pinch paprika

Mandi Ehman's Method:In a large saucepan, sauté onion in oil until golden. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil.Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for 45-60 minutes, or leave on the top of the woodburner for an hour or two.Puree in the pot with a stick blender. Transfer to a sterilized jar - I used an old tomato sauce bottle and an old jam jar - with a tight lid and store in the refrigerator or freezer, leaving about an inch of headspace in any jars that will go into the freezer.Secundus' verdict: "It tastes like cold pasta sauce."Prima's verdict: "Please may I have the normal tomato sauce?"My verdict: I could get to like this Easy Homemade sauce, mainly because I know exactly what is in it, and I would swap it for the less healthy Smartprice ketchup, but it doesn't really taste the same. It looks good in the bottle and I am going to make my own "homesteady" label. The ketchup will last a month in the fridge and 6 months in the freezer. If we don't get through it in time, I can always transform it into pizza topping or pasta sauce. Worth doing and easy to make, but (as I expected) not a hit with my ketchup-loving kids. Find out more about the Easy Homemade e-book from the author herself:

Welcome to my world

The job of being a parent can be the biggest challenge we face. A job with no training manual, induction or sabbatical. A job for life.

This is a down-to-earth blog to help my fellow mums. Instead of being full of my daily gripes and moans, Mumtopia is full of things that are positive, things that work, things that'll make life better. A tall order.

About Me

Eco-worrier, coffee addict, labourer/ carpenter's mate, mother of two (Prima and Secundus are not their real names, but there has to be some pay-off for having done Latin GCSE!), married to the King and pretending to live in the 1940s. Always got something up my sleeve. Not necessarily a handkerchief.